“How
often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make
sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge
our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we
have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
The Sense of an
Ending is a story about how one tells one's own life story. How an old man
feels when looking back at the lost time of his life. At one time or another in
our lives, we all say that history is not absolutely reliable. In our
perception, it mainly depends upon the credibility of the narrator and his
source of information. But it also depends upon how the narrator himself sees
the situation in question. His own character, preferences and role in the
historical event often moulds the history into a defense of his own. The
narrator might not be intentionally deceiving, rather he might himself be
deluded by his own memory. And memory is
imperfect and can only partially tell the truth. But the tricky part is that
you don’t always realize that your memory is impaired by your own opinions in addition to passing of time.
“History
is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet
the inadequacies of documentation.”
"I
survived. 'He survived to tell the tale'—that’s what people say, don’t they?
History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I
know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are
neither victorious nor defeated."
The book is about
the poignancy of old age. When there is nothing more to expect for the future.
The only things that remain are the memories that the idle mind of a retired
man thinks over again and again and mould them according to what he wanted them
to be. And what would it be like then to realize at a later point in life that
your own memory of your own life is an illusion, a fortress you have created to
protect yourself from your own past but only to realize that the walls are half
dissolved into the air. From where you stand, all that can be seen are some
foggy, disconnected images. You can let life go on like that and be contented.
After all, being contented is all one wants at the end. Whether the contentment
is borne out of one's good deeds or from only the illusion created by memories
does not really matter. Old Tony was living just that kind of life. Retired.
Alone. Letting life happen to him. Having stopped planning for future. Just
living one day at a time. Reminiscing about his youth and had preserving some
guarded memories. Getting nostalgic about lost emotional attachments. Until
some ghosts from the past rose to haunt him with his own doings.
"when
you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that
age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed; children
growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss
of desire—and desirability. You may go further and consider your own
approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be
faced alone. But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead,
and then imagine yourself looking back from that future point. Learning the new
emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to
your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty,
as to what you are or have been."
"But
I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I
suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood
knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that
wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if
nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that
such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty."
About the great mystery:
I really liked this
book and I think that it would be my absolute favourite. But the story which is
supposedly a shocking mystery does not make much sense to me. All right, Tony
had a shallow personality. He was neither an intellectual nor thoughtful. He had
been stupid and non-serious as a young man, used to making fun of everything and
everyone. He had conveniently forgotten some his extremely thoughtless acts and
living a peaceful, more or less contented life at an old age. But why should the
blame of his friend's affair rest on his shoulders is something I don’t really
understand.
-------------------------------
***Spoilers Alert! ***
Tony had a
girlfriend called Veronica who broke up with him and later had an affair with
Tony's friend Adrian, who was supposed to be a great intellectual at philosophy
and later committed suicide. When Tony heard about it, he wrote an angry letter
addressing both Adrian and Veronica, trying to poison them against each other. Honestly, the letter was very immature and very obviously written to
appease the writer himself by taking out his anger at the couple. It was the kind of letter that would make you
marvel at the extent of human stupidity. It was totally senseless like someone
bursting with anger, not knowing what he is saying. But Adrian, the genius, was
naïve enough to take it seriously. He went to Veronica's mother on Tony's
suggestion in the letter. Even up to this point, if her mother did not turn out
to be very convincing about Veronica and he broke up with Veronica, the blame,
to some extent, could be placed upon Tony for poisoning their relationship. But
how could he possibly imagine that Adrian would take a fancy to Veronica's
mother. Not just that. He got the old lady pregnant and this turned out to be
the reason of his suicide. In his suicide note, he had given some strange
philosophical reason for taking his own life and to my utter disgust, everybody
actually admired his "bravery" and commitment with his beliefs.
Well, many decades after his death, it
was revealed that Adrian had killed himself out of shame for having got his
former girlfriend's elderly mother pregnant, who later gave birth to his son.
Now I don’t understand how Veronica could have thought that Tony will guess and
understand all this by himself as she kept telling him in disgust that
"You will never understand" again and again. Nobody can think that
wildly. How could he possibly guess that telling Adrian to meet Veronica's
mother would make him have a physical relationship with her. That was
unforeseeable, even if Tony had been in foreseeing mood while writing the
stupid, overrated letter. Even the old lady thought he was responsible for her affair as she left him "blood money" and Adrian's diary. Still I don’t believe that Tony had any significant place
in the so-called chain of responsibility. But Tony, Adrian, Veronica and her mother were all convinced of his role. Strange, isn't it?
-------------------------------
The book has a truly shocking ending and I was left with a literally open mouth. But the thing about the chain of responsibility simply eludes me.
But that is probably the difference between being a listener to a story and being a part of it. The book is also about how people are prone to placing and accepting blame. Those who have led only an average life with some achievements, some regrets and some sorrows and have only a mediocre life but a high opinion of themselves have the tendency to doubt themselves much more than others. Tony, who was just that kind of person, did not have the energy to defend himself or may be he wanted to feel important. How would he defend himself against the ugliness of the letter, however immature and stupid ! And Veronica had probably had a better chance of preventing what had happened so many years ago but she still accused Tony for leading Adrian to his fate. But here again is the thing about history and imperfections of memory and of trying to protect one from one's own actions. Who could be certain of right and wrong or responsibility and blame after such long time when even the events in question are only some nebulous, distant, imperfect biased and self-preserving memories.Tony probably just did not know enough to understand the extent of his role. May be it was his self-centred-ness that made him accept a more important role than pointing it out to Veronica that he was not really supposed to "get it". The only evidence of the past was what was there in written form: the letter. And now it was too late to find out the complete truth. His sense of coming to the end of life and his passivity were probably the reason of silently accepting his role as suggested by Veronica.
The story makes it look as if life is but an enigma in the end; you don't know yourself what happened to you and what you made happen in all those years !!
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